#poor guts

a dispassionate analysis written for a better understanding of both characters and of Berserk

Part 8: You were the only one who made me forget my dream

Image: Berserk, chapter 366

Last year I started writing down my thoughts about Berserk, with some difficulty I must add, in part because I am writing in my second language. Clumsily, I started putting out some ideas in a series of meta, a work in progress for a manga that isn’t finished. I was rereading Berserk because, after Miura’s passing, when publication restarted, I decided I really wanted to know how the story would have ended. Devilman without its final chapter would be a very different manga. I am fully aware that every assumption I have made about Berserk could be completely rendered false by its ending, but nevertheless by trying to understand better what is going on at the moment I hope I will able to understand any eventual ending [and I have some predictions, but today I am just lying down a little bit of ground work].

The character arc most developed at this moment seems to be Griffith’s story:

The Golden Age saw his rise and fall as a remarkable but ultimately common man that was chasing an exceptional dream;

The Eclipse saw his transformation into something no longer human but existing on a separate plane, let’s call it the dream reality, that will progressively begin merging with the reality known to the other human characters, let’s call it historical reality (or material reality);

The Conviction arc brought Griffith back into the historical reality as a reincarnation, able to interact again with the world from inside and outside the dream reality, the separation between planes becoming thinner and thinner;

The Falcon of the Millennium Empire arc saw Griffith carrying out the dream he had when he was human to its completion, causing the merger of the dream reality with the historical reality into a new world called Fantasia.

This is where we are at now, and any analysis becomes more difficult because we don’t know which direction the story will take from here.

What can be noticed about Berserk is that Griffith’s ability and his willingness to dream has been the driving force all along, transforming him into a demiurge, responsible for the reshaping of reality itself.

I believe that every time an Eclipse happened in Berserk, the same reshaping and recreation of the world followed: but the dreams and the will, that were the motor of the shifting reality, have always been arbitrary and tied to the particular, egotistical and impulsive nature of the dreamers that came before Griffith. His predecessor could either be Void or Skull Knight: many people have said it’s Void, but that would mean that, in the millennium previous to the start of our story, none of the members of the God Hand was reincarnated. I prefer the hypothesis that Skull Knight is a reincarnation of one of the God Hand like Griffith is and that he went rogue, going against the God Hand and the laws of causality connected to it.

In this hypothetical scenario, Skull Knight isn’t a sacrificial witness that survived Void’s Eclipse ceremony, like Guts and Casca, but he was the one who sacrificed the people at the bottom of the Tower of Rebirth in Midland, or he sacrificed his beloved, the Lady Priestess of the Cherry Blossoms, among them. He was part of the God Hand, in the dream reality, until, like Griffith, he was imperfectly reincarnated as the ambiguous being of today, able to interact outside of the dream reality the Hand of God is normally confined in. His interactions with the historical reality could have been limited in scope, if we consider Griffith’s achievements, or he could have built his empire after his ceremonial, until Void became a new member of the God Hand. We don’t know how it went, how Skull Knight’s reincarnation happened, only that Flora was involved in a ritual and she had to break fundamental rules to do it. At the Conviction Tower many elements have converged to remake Griffith as he is now, including the dream, the will and the body of an Apostle, Egg of the Perfect World, and the corrupted fetus born from Casca. As arbitrary the dreams of the people who used a Beherit are, the circumstances of Griffith’s reincarnation have a degree of abnormality and risk outside of the control of the God Hand’s domain. That could be why only one of five members of the God Hand goes through a second ritual.

But if the Egg dreamt of a perfect world, Casca’s baby would have a dream too, probably of being a normal child and be reunited with his parents. Consider how Casca and Guts are also anomalies in the world post Griffith’s Eclipse: they are surviving despite being marked by the brand of sacrifice. The protagonists of Berserk since the early chapters are those who are exceptions to the rules of causality, those who are doing something outside of the control of the Hand of God.

I have said that I think that Skull Knight has gone rogue at some point after his reincarnation: he is facilitating a series of abnormalities and diversions in order to unmake or divert the course of causality as dictated by the darkness of human desires and fears. I am interested in his motivations, since something similar might happen to Griffith. And Skull Knight is shown to remember and maybe have regrets about losing his beloved.

A detail that immediately caught my attention: before Skull Knight could take Guts and Casca to safety, from inside the dream reality of the Eclipse ceremony, Griffith had a chance to kill them or to try to get to Skull Knight, and stop him. He raises his hand but doesn’t do anything.

Having Casca and Guts alive isn’t irrelevant at all to Griffith. They are the two people who were the most important for him before and we know that he isn’t indifferent to them. After his reincarnation, Griffith’s heart beats heavier in front of Guts and he is unable to stand Casca’s touch after their reunion on the Hill of Swords. Whether the new connection with Casca is built around her having mothered a part that is in him now or guilt or regret raising from underneath a careful construed detachment, whether other feelings for Guts are still there, it is still interesting to see that the survival of the people marked by the brand isn’t of little consequence.

Image: Berserk, chapter 180

With the creation of Falconia, Griffith seems to have succeeded, but since the beginning of the story, his dream was nothing more than an illusion: the illusion of equality, the possibility of scaling up the social hierarchy. And Falconia seems to offer the same kind of illusion, of opportunity, of wealth, of progress, for those who inhabit it, but not for those who are outside of it. [I’ll leave the multiple parallels to the real world outside of this analysis, but they aren’t difficult to see].

When Griffith was alive and human, he was able to doubt himself, almost forgetting his dream: jumping into danger to rescue Guts, asking for a second opinion, uncertainly and unsuccessfully looking for warmth and human connection. Until the most recent chapters, that ability to feel, doubt, regret, anything at all, was seemingly gone or hidden and buried so well that those residual emotions wouldn’t have mattered. But Griffith indulging the Moonlight Child - voluntarily or not doesn’t make a huge difference, because he is the Moonlight Child - going back to spend time with Casca and Guts: those actions that occur during the Full Moon, imply that a part of Griffith is still vulnerable or reachable. [At a later time, I’d like to write about all the symbolism of the Moon in Berserk].

I started this article with the images of Schierke trying to look at Griffith’s projection in the astral plane: a dimension that exists outside of the dream reality and outside of the historical reality [all things are projections, remember Skull Knight’s speech to Guts?]. That sequence, that came out after Miura’s passing, is one of the most interesting of the Fantasia arc, in my opinion.

Griffith’s image of impassivity and detachment is contradicted by his astral projection, as Schierke and Farnese note: Such terrible power. Its very being is like a maelstrom, consuming all. All Griffith’s human emotions are part of the raging vortex. This opens up a world of possibilities for Griffith’s further development, that in my opinion hasn’t reached a conclusion. And he certainly hasn’t achieved anything of value: Griffith’s story is one of the most appalling tragedy I have read. It is inevitable that it continues to hold up and is the most powerful force driving the manga. He has never been a god, or a devil, and only the readers able to see and keep in mind the full humanity of Griffith, can maybe agree with my interpretation of this complex world of illusion and delusion that is in Berserk. I am open to the possibility that a part of Griffith is aligned with the original dream of the Moonlight Child, to be reunited with Casca and Guts in a warm embrace, that when he was alive he had longed for too.

Concepts used:

[The dream reality is a vast landscape born of human emotions, fears and desires].

[The astral plane is the level in which all things interact and all energies are moving and there isn’t a substantial difference between humans and all things and creatures of the natural world].

[The historical or material reality is the world where humanity operates and that humans shapes for themselves].

Image: Berserk, chapter 372

This panel showing Zodd in Fanconia is impressed in my mind for a few reasons. One being, has he always been attractive? Another, I wonder if he is starting to get suspicious or doubting Griffith’s reasons for bringing Casca back with them.

Now I have to deal with no more content to consume, other than maybe tracking down the 1997 anime, or even the 2017 one (though I’m told that one’s not very good?)

Does anyone know if there’s a schedule of when new chapters come out, or is it just wait until whenever they come out?